Personal character.
At the opening of Shakespeare’s career Chettle wrote of his ‘civil demeanour’ and of the reports of ‘his uprightness of dealing which argues his honesty.’ In 1601—when near the zenith of his fame—he was apostrophised as ‘sweet Master Shakespeare’ in the play of ‘The Return from Parnassus,’ and that adjective was long after associated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker in a poem called ‘Daiphantus’ bestowed on him the epithet ‘friendly.’ After the close of his career Jonson wrote of him: ‘I loved the man and do honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as any. He was, indeed, honest and of an open and free
nature.’ [278a] No other contemporary left on record any definite impression of Shakespeare’s personal character, and the ‘Sonnets,’ which alone of his literary work can be held to throw any illumination on a personal trait, mainly reveal him in the light of one who was willing to conform to all the conventional methods in vogue for strengthening the bonds between a poet and a great patron. His literary practices and aims were those of contemporary men of letters, and the difference in the quality of his work and theirs was due not to conscious endeavour on his part to act otherwise than they, but to the magic and involuntary working of his genius. He seemed unconscious of his marvellous superiority to his professional comrades. The references in his will to his fellow-actors, and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First Folio) they approached the task of collecting his works after his death, corroborate the description of him as a sympathetic friend of gentle, unassuming mien. The later traditions brought together by Aubrey depict him as ‘very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,’ and there is much in other early posthumous references to suggest a genial, if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare. His extant work attests his ‘copious’ and continuous industry, [278b] and with his literary power and
sociability there clearly went the shrewd capacity of a man of business. Pope had just warrant for the surmise that he
For gain not glory winged his roving flight,
And grew immortal in his own despite.
His literary attainments and successes were chiefly valued as serving the prosaic end of providing permanently for himself and his daughters. His highest ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen the family repute which his father’s misfortunes had imperilled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare among poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among writers of exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of their mental attitude towards life’s ordinary incidents.